


A Problem Of Linguistics

by SeaOfBones



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Fake Episode, Gen, Minor James T. Kirk/Spock, Nyota Uhura Saves The Day, POV Nyota Uhura, Secret Santa, you will RESPECT the communications officer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27913531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaOfBones/pseuds/SeaOfBones
Summary: When faced with a problem that can only be solved by communication, the crew turns to Nyota Uhura to save the Enterprise.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	A Problem Of Linguistics

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laydeemayhem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laydeemayhem/gifts).



After a long approach, the great flickering cloud of neon particles now filled the view screen. Uhura had turned in her chair to look at it. It was beautiful against the deep black of the universe, despite the danger it posed.

Even with the Federation’s most advanced scanners, Sulu and Chekov hadn’t been able to figure out what it was. There was too much interference, Sulu had said; they were blocking themselves out.

Uhura had wondered if they were machines, if they were a swarm of insects or a school of space-fish. She had worked on the communications, and left the science to the Science Officers. But every pattern she had asked the ship’s computer to run on it had failed. There was nothing but the quiet, constant noise of space coming through on the sensors.

Stubborn as ever, Kirk had been unwilling to open fire on something so clearly one-of-a-kind, and the rest of the bridge had agreed. Now, even if they’d wanted to, they didn’t have a choice. Their systems were shutting down, the medbay busy with engineers scorched by shorting systems.

All the Science Officers had figured out before the scanners closed down was that particles were in some way alive, and intelligent enough to dismantle every communication relay the Federation had set up in this quadrant without setting off the alarm. Intelligent enough that it had begun to do so to the Enterprise, now that they were close enough.

And as he did in every disaster where he needed more than his charm and Spock’s logic to negotiate, Kirk turned to Uhura for a solution.

“Perhaps the signals from the communication relays were… hurting them, somehow,” Kirk suggested.

“You know, Captain, that was the first thing I tried,” Uhura explained patiently. “I thought that maybe it was making a sound only they could hear, and that they might be communicating on the same frequency, so I expanded the range. But we still can’t find anything.”

Chekov occasionally rattled at the controls in case they would now respond to him. When it once again did nothing, he muttered words in Russian that the universal translator decided not to share with them.

“Perhaps it doesn’t have a language,” Kirk suggested. “Is it possible for something so intelligent not to speak?”

“To say that what humans call the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – the link between the form of a language and the form of the brain that speaks it – has been disproved would be to assume it was proven in the first place,” Spock said evenly.

“Is this relevant, Mr Spock?” Kirk asked, squaring his shoulders to his sardonic second-in-command.

Spock continued, regardless. “Many schools of Vulcan thought have also tried to find some link between our speech and the shape of our minds, but language proves… too chaotic.” He arched an eyebrow and looked pointedly at Kirk. “You assume speech is the mark of the sentient, but perhaps _silence_ is the choice of the most intelligent creatures of all.”

“I didn’t ask for a philosophical lecture, Mr Spock,” Kirk replied.

“Boys, this isn’t the time for bickering,” Uhura sighed.

Kirk turned back to Uhura and continued speaking as if she hadn’t chastised him. Those two were, as always, more similar than they thought. “Our translator knows every kind of spoken, written or signed language that survived into the 20th century. Lieutenant Uhura, what haven’t we tried?”

“Our translator can only do so much,” Uhura replied. “It needs to know the language, or a close relative. We know animals can communicate, even if we don't know what they're saying. However it is that the different parts of the cloud communicate with each other, it’s not in a way the ship can understand.“

She looked out into the cluster. So many thousands of little minds, thinking for themselves or thinking together. Some of them flickered, occasionally. She had tried to find pattern in them. In their darkness and their light, in the shape the swarm took.

“Computer,” Uhura said, half-resigned. “Show me a time-lapse of the entities over the past half hour.” Perhaps there was something they’d missed.

They were uniform in shape, apart from getting closer. No differing glimmers of command. The only change was…

“Computer, again,” Uhura said quietly.

“Lieutenant,” Spock prompted. “You've noticed something.”

The only change was that the cloud was now a subtly lighter shade of blue, cerulean to teal.

“Computer,” Uhura repeated. “What colour are the lights on the communication relays that were installed in this region?”

The specifications took up another window on the view screen. Blue. The blinking lights on the relay were blue.

“Federation standard,” Spock explained. “The same colour as the side lights on the Enterprise.”

“Exactly,” Uhura murmured. “It's the colour, Captain. So many fish, insects and birds communicate with colour. If these creatures see colours in a different way, perhaps it's not a sound that's hurting them, but a particular shade of light.”

Kirk crossed one leg over the other, looking between Spock and Uhura. “Give me a solution, then.”

White sparks erupted from the control panels, sending Chekov flying across the room in a floppy-haired blur.

“Turns off the lights, Captain,” Uhura said. “All of them.”

Kirk lifted his head slightly. “Computer, you heard her,” Kirk said.

The panel in front of Sulu began to spark, and then stopped. The Enterprise went black as space, all except the dimmed viewscreen.

“If they were taking apart the communication relays to make the light stop,” Uhura explained. “Then they should leave us alone if we stay in the dark.”

The creature was still where it was. It had never moved quickly. But this silence, no more sparks and no more sound than the quiet hum of the ship… Uhura took that as a good sign.

“I’m impressed by your quick thinking, Lieutenant,” Spock said.

“Every creature has a different perspective,” Uhura reokued. “Your instincts weren’t wrong, Captain. There are many dangers in the universe, but… more than that, there’s pain. Even if we can never speak with these beings, we can stop causing them pain.”

The shape filling the screen was was beginning to recede now, as Uhura imagined that they did when they finished disabling every last blinking light on the communication relays. Chekov peeled himself off the floor in as dignified a manner as he could muster.

“I’m not looking forward to writing this report,” Kirk said, all of his bravado returning as the danger dissipated. “Describing a different form of language, and having to tell the Federation to rethink _blue_.”

“And yet, you took on the responsibilities of report-writing when you applied to be Captain,” Spock observed.

“It was a _humorous remark_ , Mr Spock,” Kirk replied. Uhura shook her head gently and turned to walk back to her station.

Just as they had gazed upon that creature in confusion, those two would struggle to understand each other’s ways of language. Uhura hoped, as she always did, that not only the crew but all of this crowded universe would come to understand each other someday, and someday soon at that.


End file.
